So Different Now From What It Seemed
by nothing-rhymes-with-ianto
Summary: She feels like her life has been ruined. This little boy has poisoned whatever innocent happiness she may have had.


_Written for the "poisoning" square of angst_bingo._

* * *

She was fifteen, he seventeen. She thought she loved him more than anything. Thought he loved her, too. She asked if they could try it. She wasn't a kid anymore, and love _meant_ something now. So they did, on his bed as darkly blue as the night outside the window.

Nine months later, she holds a squirming blob of pink human in her arms and he is nowhere to be seen. She names him Owen, and drops out of school in order to get three jobs to care for him. He is a quiet baby that looks around at the world with big observant eyes. She can already tell he's going to look more like his father than her. It grates on her.

He's two and she's only seventeen and she wants to cry as he tears around the greengrocer's and screams and babbles. Her friends are going off to university next year, and she's stuck here. Any vague dreams she'd had a few years ago have been worn away and she's already tired. He squeals and reads the title of some picture book to her, shrieking for it. She snatches it out of his hands and snaps at him to be quiet and stop messing about. She just wants to get home.

At six, he comes home crying from primary school. She's only been home for ten minutes, she's had a terrible day at work, and she doesn't want to hear the high-pitched sniffling noises.

"The boys at school made fun of me. They called me a nerd because I can read a lot and said I was ugly."

"Hm. Call them ugly back." She doesn't know. It seems she can't even remember being six anymore. She feels like she's been cursed with this boy, this creature that has aged her so quickly and she's still so young.

He's still crying, so she hugs him and tells him it will be okay. But he glares at her because he's only six and he already knows that's not true. She kisses his forehead and sends him off and tries to think about how everyone says motherhood is a gift. She looks at the mess around her, hears the hiccupping sobs down the hall, and is pretty sure it's a disaster.

He's eight and she doesn't know how to control him. He gets into fist fights, insults his classmates. His teachers all say he's incredibly smart. He can read faster than any of the other kids, and he's already reading high school level. They say he just doesn't know how to handle other people.

Well, _I_ don't know how to handle _him_, she thinks. He gets angry and breaks things, punches the wall until his knuckles are cut. Nine years old and he's already calling her pathetic and evil, mocking her inability to keep her boyfriends, her barely enough jobs, bruising her with scathing words.

"I hate you!" he yells from his room when she doesn't have the money to let him take extra lessons. "You can't do anything right! You messed you up and now you're messing me up!"

"Shut up," she snaps at him, then turns away. The truth rubs raw and Owen seems to know it. There's some instinct inside him to find a bruise and _push_.

But when he's not yelling, he's the sweetest person in the entire world. She can't like him, though. She just can't. He's her son, but can't like the child that called her those names, that exposed her vulnerabilities and twisted them vilely. She loves him, sure, a blood love like a mother must love her child. But she can't stand him.

He's ten and blaming her for everything. It's his birthday. He doesn't have a party or cake; not enough money, not enough friends. She's tired and stuffy with remnants of a cold and he asks her why she doesn't love him more, why she's not like the other mums he sees. His voice is rough and accusing.

"I love you because you're my son," she screams at him. "That doesn't mean I have to _like_ you. That doesn't mean I have to love what you _are_."

"I hate you!" A kick leaves a nick in the white baseboard, the brown wood showing through. "You're awful! You ruin everything!"

"You're my son. But I don't like you. I can't like you. You're awful! I _can't_ like you!"

She feels like her life has been ruined. The boy eating a sandwich at the kitchen table is the virus that has shrivelled her future up and made her present ill. She can do nothing but work and try to keep them alive. This boy has poisoned whatever innocent happiness she may have had. Some nights she lies awake and listens to him humming quietly as he reads and remembers a night with dark blue sheets and a boy she thought she loved. The night this burden was given to her.

When he's thirteen, she loses one of her jobs and misses the rent. She's shaking when she comes home from work to talk to the landlord. She begs him to give her just a little bit more time, just a little. He leers at her.

She comes into the house feeling humiliated and manipulated and ashamed. Owen is sitting at the kitchen table, doing homework. He looks at her like he knows what's just happened. He says nothing and goes back to his work. She slams the door to her bedroom, curls up on her bed, and cries.

Owen gets meaner, pricklier, harder to deal with. He says horrible things to her and she spits things back at him and neither of them know what to do. She still feels too young to be so old, too young to have a kid who's fourteen and angry and too smart for her to reach even if she wanted to. His teachers say he's brilliant. She wouldn't know. She's never been very bright. If she'd been like him, she wouldn't be in this mess.

Owen loves science. It's his favourite subject in school. She knows he sometimes steals her wallet in order to go buy books on biology, chemistry, anatomy, whatever. She doesn't know what to do about it. He reads at night instead of sleeping, and mumbles to himself about being a doctor. She doesn't think that'll go anywhere, not with the way she went.

"We don't have enough money to pay for you to drive all the way up to Sheffield for a science field trip."

"But I _have _to, mum. It's important to my grade. You know I want to go be a doctor. Everything needs to look good."

"Well, sorry. I don't have the money. You'll just have to look slightly shitty."

"I already look shitty! We live in a shitty house in a shitty neighbourhood and wear shitty old clothes that have probably been worn by fifty other people. I have no friends and go to a shitty school. I just want to go be a doctor."

They always seem to fall back into childish arguing, no matter how old they are. She can't help but take the bait.

"We're shitty like this because of you. I work hard to even own these clothes and this house."

"Not hard enough," she hears him mutter.

"Say that again?"

His head snaps up, but there's a malevolent smirk at his lips and he knows she heard. "I said I just wanted thirty-five pounds."

"Tough shit. I haven't got the cash. Go away."

He blows a raspberry at her, and she's pretty sure he's making a rude gesture behind his back. He stomps away and slams the door to his room. The field trip comes and goes and he doesn't participate. His teacher gives him a writing assignment. The professor says he went above and beyond the expected.

She works, and keeps working, and tries not to speak to him. They live different lives in the same house. They eat together at the table maybe once a month. When they do talk, they end up fighting, or speaking in condescending tones to each other. It hurts. She's long since given up trying to like him at all.

He's fifteen and about to be done with his GCSE's and she's terrified. She hates the summers, with him around all the time and no school to distract. When it comes, she packs her schedule. They actively avoid each other. They know that even a kind word will quickly devolve into a screaming match. It's been done before. They're tired of it.

He's just turned sixteen and has a little job at a shop selling furniture. It's not what he wants to do, she knows. He's sixteen. She pulls his duffle bags and suitcase out while he's at work, packs them full of his clothes and bedding and books. They're out in front of the door when he comes home.

She sees his face when he sees them. It's a mixture of anger and relief, and he sneers up at her. "That is the nicest thing you've done for me in years, mother."

"It's time for you to go."

"I'm going," he picks up his bags and puts them on the pavement. "Goodbye, mum. See you around, maybe."

Probably not, she thinks. She shrugs. "Bye."

His back is angry and straight as he walks away. She watches him hail a cab and get inside. His face is young and full of ambition, like hers was. He doesn't look at her as the cab drives past. And all she can think is that when she was his age, she had a future, had a dream, and she had to throw it away because of him. And he gets to have it all.


End file.
